Subject: Re: Beginner question: performance problems with a simple program
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 10:08:31 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3218954908969001@naggum.net>
* Duane Rettig <duane@franz.com>
| Well, as a native English speaker, I understand that English is an
| important language used in computer science, but for the very reason you
| cite I do not want to assume too much.
Each field has only one common language. Any attempt to add more will
split the field. It is already a problem that research published in
French and German are unavailable to the rest of the computer science
community.
| Whether non-native-English speakers (or more importantly, whether
| non-English speakers) accept English-only interfaces is going to be up to
| you/them.
Fluency in English is a sine qua non in computer science. Programmers
who want translated software tools and programming languages in their
native tongue will forever remain incompetent tinkerers. Only one
company on the planet thinks this is a good idea.
| And the acceptability of such English-only interfaces are likely to vary
| according to the audience; whether to the programmer or to the end-user.
End-users should _obviously_ be served with natural language interfaces.
I do not see how what I have said could be construed to have been arguing
against natural-language end-user interfaces. Quite the contrary, I have
made several points about how software that needs to talk to real users
must be tailor-made in each language. How could this possibly be taken
to mean that we should _not_ make natural-language interfaces for users?
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